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Passing Thoughts on Religion, by the Author of 'amy Herbert'.
Passing Thoughts on Religion by the Author of 'amy Herbert' Author:Elizabeth Missing Sewell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1860 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: WILFUL SIN. St. Luke, xxii. 3 -- 6. " Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray Him unto them in the absence of the multitude." Few of us, probably, fully face the fact of the existence of an Evil Spirit. We think of temptation as coming from ourselves, and from our own nature. The possibility of possession is so terrible that we shrink from it, and therefore put away from us the idea altogether. But whatever truths are revealed to us in Scripture must be for our good, and it cannot be right to set them aside. The very horror we feel when we fully place before our minds the existence of Satan, forces us to flee to our Saviour. He that is with us is stronger than he that is against us. This is the only thought to calm us, and yet to give us energy. We are to fight with the assurance of victory ; but fight we must against a personal enemy, who takes advantage, by the very words we use, and the very habits of our daily life, to hide from us the fact, that we are fighting. We do not understand that we are actually engaged in a battle, because our ideas of warfare arc earthly. We can form no idea of it except as connected with material objects. We think the expression to be figurative and allegorical, and thus it becomes unreal to us; and the very books which are put into our hands, describing Christian life under the image of conflict, are made the means o...« less